Tim Sebastian - Deutsche Welle - At the heart of the delay? The division
between Hamas-led Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank,
of which Shaath’s Fatah party makes up the most powerful group. "You
cannot hold a democracy under disunity. Otherwise you consecrate the
division," said Shaath on this week’s Conflict Zone from Ramallah.-rh

Haaretz Editorial - Abbas: “Every time they repeatedly stressed to me how much they believe and are committed to a two-state solution and a halt to construction in the settlements. I have pleaded with them to say the same thing to Netanyahu, but they didn`t. And indeed, Netanyahu has also stopped believing in Trump’s commitment to a political agreement. Otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed himself to express his hawkish views - that he is opposed to a Palestinian state and to any withdrawal from the West Bank. [bz]

Daniel Levy - The National Interest - Israel cannot draw upon the reserves of white settlers who facilitated American or Australian pacification of numerically limited and isolated indigenous populations. That makes zero sum so high risk and ill-advised for Israel, even before one enters the ethical, moral or values dimension. [bz]

Akiva Eldar - Al-Monitor - The Charlottesville events will go down in
the annals of Israeli history as one of the grimmest chapters in ties
between the “Jewish state” and the strongest Jewish community in the
world. When Israel is in trouble, American Jews, whether Reform,
Conservative or Orthodox, stand by its side. When American Jews found
themselves in trouble, Israeli Jews, whether secular or religious,
left wing or right, saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing. Israeli
citizens can only hope that the Jewish community in Virginia and the
AIPAC offices in Washington have not heard the motto favored by the
prime minister of Israel, who presumes to lead the Jewish people in
the conflict with the Palestinians: “If they give, they will get; if
they don’t give, they won’t get.”-rh

Ahmad Melhem -
Al Monitor -
"One of the outcomes of a major meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah was an agreement to form a crisis committee to coordinate the positions of both countries regarding incidents at Jerusalem`s holy sites." - id

Ben Caspit -
Al Monitor -
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair expresses openly the far-right and Arab-hating positions expressed a bit more discreetly by his father and his official entourage." - id

Uri Avnery -
Gush Shalom -
"The very fact that the federation idea crops up again and again shows its necessity. The groups of activists who are bringing it up now were not yet born when we first proposed the idea – yet their message sounds new and fresh. May their cause prosper." - id

Noam Sheizaf - +972 - Most of the circumstances that made the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict ripe for resolution — or at least made the peace process
attractive to both parties — have all but disappeared over the past decade [ry]

Ramzy Baroud -
nformation Clearing House
"In its obsessive efforts to defeat the Palestinian-led boycott
movement, AIPAC will soon force the revisitation of a long-dormant
debate on the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine.
US mainstream media has long avoided an honest discussion on
Israel and Palestine as if the mere acknowledgment of a Palestinian
point of view, let alone Palestinian rights, is in itself a sinister
act." ca

J.J. Goldberg - Forward - America was shamed on Tuesday as we have
never been shamed before. We were debased as a nation by the words of
a president who stood before the world and defended the honor of
Nazis. He reduced himself in an instant from alarming buffoon to
dangerous villain. We who elected him stand disgraced, humiliated.-rh

BETHAN MCKERNAN - Independent - Israel’s Channel 2 - known for its
political coverage - said it had learned that over the last few weeks
Mr Netanyahu has been pushing for an amendment to the Basic Law
Concerning the Government which would allow him to “declare war or to
launch a military operation, without the need for its approval by the
government, and in certain cases, without the presence of the entire
[Security] Cabinet.”Israel’s Channel 2 - known for its political
coverage - said it had learned that over the last few weeks Mr
Netanyahu has been pushing for an amendment to the Basic Law
Concerning the Government which would allow him to “declare war or to
launch a military operation, without the need for its approval by the
government, and in certain cases, without the presence of the entire
[Security] Cabinet.”Israel’s Channel 2 - known for its political
coverage - said it had learned that over the last few weeks Mr
Netanyahu has been pushing for an amendment to the Basic Law
Concerning the Government which would allow him to “declare war or to
launch a military operation, without the need for its approval by the
government, and in certain cases, without the presence of the entire
[Security] Cabinet.”Israel’s Channel 2 - known for its political
coverage - said it had learned that over the last few weeks Mr
Netanyahu has been pushing for an amendment to the Basic Law
Concerning the Government which would allow him to “declare war or to
launch a military operation, without the need for its approval by the
government, and in certain cases, without the presence of the entire
[Security] Cabinet.-rh

Ali Abunimah -
Lobby Watch - EI -
""A cornerstone of Israel’s policy today is to cement ties with other ultra-nationalist, racist and Islamophobic forces around the world – even if they are also anti-Semitic." A striking example is Netanyahu’s own embrace of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban." - id

Hagai El-Ad - +972 Magazine - Last week PM Netanyahu, speaking to
a cheering crowd of Likud party loyalists, made a myriad of
manifestly false accusations against the media and “the left". But
Netanyahu did state one essential truth: the world can bring an end
to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Back in 2011 former PM Ehud
Barak had warned that Israel was about to face a “diplomatic
tsunami”, an overwhelming "international movement towards
recognizing a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders…". As
Netanyahu correctly noted, there was no
tsunami, nor even a strong rainstorm. [ak]

Shlomo Sand - Counterpunch - I stopped being able to understand you when, in the course of your speech, you stated that “Anti-Zionism … is the reinvented form of anti-Semitism.” Has this former student of philosophy, Paul Ricoeur’s assistant, read so few history books that he does not know that many Jews or descendants of Jewish heritage have always opposed Zionism, without this making them anti-Semites? (...) And finally I wonder if you seriously expect of the Palestinians that they should not be anti-Zionists! [bz]

Philip Weiss - Mondoweiss - "BDS tactics in the Israel Palestine case, were actually initiated in 1997 by an Israeli group, Gush Shalom, Uri Avnery’s group, a militantly anti-occupation group which played a significant role. They proposed boycott of the settlements and divestment from anything involving the settlements. And I myself have been involved in– it’s really BD activities, there are no real sanctions, that’s a state matter. But I’ve been involved in these things since the late ’90s, when it took off, aimed at the settlements. The BDS movement, which developed in 2005, has a different approach. That’s the movement, not the tactics.
[bz]

Akiva Eldar -
Al-Monitor -
"In his many years as Israel`s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to destroy relations between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs and the right and left." - id

Orly Azoulay -
Ynet -
"Neither of them is capable of taking the final bow and getting off the stage, realizing that the party is over. They will keep whining until the blow arrives, instead of doing what each of them is required to do: Just go." - id

Moshe Ronen -
+972 -
"In practice, the State of Israel has no legal tools that allow it to limit Al Jazeera’s Israeli-citizen journalists to do their work as long as they don’t violate some other law. Walid al-Omari, Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau chief, is an Israeli citizen." - id

Richard Silverstein -
Tikun Olam -
"Deposing him will not lead to any change in Israeli politics. Undoubtedly, when the ax does fall you will find the liberal Zionist journalists from the NY Times, Haaretz, and other foreign publications writing rapturously about the chance for a “new beginning.” How Israel can “make a fresh start.” How it can now approach the Palestinian issue with fresh eyes. Mainly they will carry on about how much hope there now is for a change in Israel’s posture toward the Palestinians. And they will all be wrong." - id

Uri Avnery -
Gush Shalom -
"FROM WHATEVER angle one looks at it, the death sentence is a barbaric and stupid measure. It has been abolished by all civilized countries, except some US states (which can hardly be called civilized.)" - id

Ben Caspit - Al-Monitor - On Aug. 4, the investigations into Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned from dark clouds hovering over his
head to the perfect storm. Netanyahu’s twice former chief of staff Ari
Harow, the person who served as Netanyahu’s ultimate confidante, with
access to all of his most intimate chambers, signed an agreement with
the State Attorney`s Office. Harow agreed to be a state witness
against Netanyahu. It is hard to imagine Netanyahu receiving any more
of a resounding blow. Harow gave detailed testimony against the prime
minister, giving a major boost to Case 1000 (the gifts allegedly
received by Netanyahu from businesspeople in exchange for favors) and
Case 2000 (Netanyahu`s conversations with the publisher of Yedioth
Ahronot Arnon Mozes for a positive coverage deal). It is also
conceivable that Harow will provide information on other cases
involving Netanyahu, such as the submarine affair or the far-reaching
investigation into Bezeq phone company and the Ministry of
Communications.-rh

ISABEL KERSHNER -The New York Times - A black curtain went up a few
months ago near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence
on Jerusalem’s leafy Balfour Street. It screened pesky protesters from
Mr. Netanyahu’s view — and prevented the public from seeing lawyers
and detectives come and go as criminal investigations of the prime
minister intensified.-rh

Sima Kadmon - YnetNews - The state’s witness deal signed with Benjamin
Netanyahu’s former chief of staff and close aide, Ari Harow, is not just
the game changer in the Netanyahu affairs. It’s also a personal-family
rift as big as the Great Rift Valley, and the beginning of a realization
among the family members that Netanyahu is facing an indictment.-rh

Amira Hass - Haaretz - The two young musicians, with the help of attorney Moran Gur of Gisha, still hoped that the High Court would explain the absurdity of the situation to the state. But the judges found that "the petitioners have no legal reason for which this court should intervene (...) musical development not necessarily [being] dependent on location." So, in Ramallah and Nablus the Palestine Youth Orchestra had to perform without them.
[bz]

Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi - The New Yorker - Israeli settlements may have all but erased the 1967 borders in one direction, but fifty years of occupation have helped to erase the border in the opposite direction as well. The broader Palestinian public has slowly begun to recognize the national role and place of its brethren in Israel. (...) With the expiration of the national movement “outside” the West Bank and Gaza Israel’s Palestinian citizens have inherited a new share of the struggle. [bz]

Robert Cohen - Mondoweiss - There is a paradox at the heart of modern
Jewish identity. It goes like this: “We wholeheartedly support
equality in every land apart from the place we call our national
home. There we claim privilege, we claim superior rights, we claim a
superior history, we claim a unique story of oppression which, we
argue, requires a unique and discriminatory response.” The seamless
merger that has taken place over the last 70 years, between Judaism
and Zionism and modern Jewish identity, has taken us down a moral
cul-de-sac that’s now very difficult to walk back out from.[ak]

Scott McConnell - The American Conservative - BDS may well be conceived and supported by some who don’t want Israel to exist at all. But support for it would dry up overnight if the occupation ended and Palestinians had their own sovereign state. [bz]

Ronni Shaked - Ynet - It’s true that Abbas annoyed us with his de-legitimization moves and with his battle against the occupation in the international arena, but even without him, there would have been an opposition to settlements and there would have been international support for the two-state solution.
Contrary to the Right’s mantra, Abbas could have been the best partner for negotiations. The government missed the opportunity of his days in power to try to advance an agreement. [bz]

Richard Falk -Wordpress - On an international level Trump will be
expected by Zionist forces to translate the UN-bashing of Nikki Haley
into concrete reality by defunding any organ of the UN (e.g. Human
Rights Council, UNESCO) that
dares document and censure Israeli wrongdoing under international law.
And regionally, Trump seems determined to champion the dangerous
Saudi/Israel agenda of anti-Iran war mongering, a posture that
threatens to convert the entire region into a war zone.-rh

Daoud Kuttab - Al-Monitor - The efforts by Sela, Hassan and others to
search, document and present the public with hidden images of
Palestine and the Palestinians flies in the face of the prevailing
Israeli narrative, which aims to negate the Palestinians and therefore
justify the continued occupation and colonization of the land and the
people. Ongoing attempts to muzzle information and keep the truth
hidden from a curious public will not succeed in erasing the memories
and images that show what Palestine was before the Zionists and
Israelis attempted to erase its history and with it the Palestinians`
presence and rights in Palestine.-rh

Nahum Barnea -
Ynet -
"The lessons from the Hebron shooting incident cannot end in the IDF. The entire political system—the entire Israeli society, in fact—must draw conclusions. If we fail to maintain the norms of a law-abiding state, we will undermine the foundations this country is built on." - id

Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man -
+972 -
"From outlawing foreign funding for human rights NGOs to reviving the death penalty (for Palestinians), to population transfer and more, Benjamin Netanyahu is going a little wild. It probably isn’t unrelated to the multiple police investigations into him and his friends." - id

Uri Avnery -
Gush Shalom -
"Netanyahu does not fear God or the Arabs. He fears Naftali Bennett.
Bennett is the leader of the "Jewish Home" party.".."Now they are the most extreme right-wing party. It is a small faction, with only eight Knesset members (out of 120), but that is enough to break up the coalition and bring the government down. Netanyahu is mortally afraid of them." - id

NATHAN THRALL and ROBERT BLECHER - NYT - First, Israel — which refuses to engage with any Hamas-led government — could transfer tax revenues on Gaza-bound goods to the people of Gaza (...) by using the tax revenues to pay for increased electricity. Second, Egypt could export more goods to Gaza, thereby reducing the amount taxed by Israel and increasing the amount taxed directly by Gaza’s government. [bz]

Allison Deger -
Mondoweiss
"Bradley Burston wrote in an op-ed for Haaretz, “This is the message
of Netanyahu’s silence regarding Charlottesville: I am not the prime
minister of the Jewish people. I am the prime minister of all of the
Jewish people who are right-wing, pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian,
pro-Me.” ca

AFP -
Al Monitor
"Criticism of Netanyahu among opposition politicians and others has
grown louder over the last couple of days, particularly after
Trump`s comments on Tuesday in which he said there was "blame on
both sides." Perhaps the harshest criticism came from Shelly
Yachimovich, a parliament member and former leader of the opposition
Labour party." ca

James J. Zogby - LobeLog - It is fascinating to watch some US senators
tripping over themselves as they attempt to defend their support for
or opposition to proposed legislation that would make it a federal
crime to support the international campaign to Boycott, Divest, or
Sanction (BDS) Israel for its continued occupation of Palestinian
lands. What ties these officials up in knots are their efforts to
square the circle of their “love of Israel”, their opposition to BDS,
their support for a “two-state solution”, and their commitment to free
speech.-rh

Daoud Kuttab - Al-Monitor - Despite Israel’s public statements about
closing down Al Jazeera’s offices in Jerusalem, it appears that the
execution of such a decision will require a great deal of legal work
on the part of the Israeli government. The decision, if implemented,
will do little to reduce the coverage by the most-watched Arab
satellite TV station. The move seems particularly odd since it would
not be favorable to Israeli officials, who used to provide some kind
of balance to Al Jazeera’s stories, which allowed them to speak
unfiltered in its reports.-rh

Bethan McKernan - Independent - Molad, a left-leaning institution
which describes itself as ‘the centre for the renewal of Israeli
democracy’, decided to sue the younger Mr Netanyahu for libel last
week after he refused to apologise for comments in a Facebook post
which branded the organisation “The Fund for the Destruction of
Israel, funded by Soros and the European Union.” -rh

Neve Gordon - Palestine Chronicle - Netanyahu’s 11-year rule thus
appears to be fast approaching an inglorious end. The more interesting
question now, however, is what the significance of these developments
will be. Two points are worth making: First, Netanyahu is not really
an outlier. Many leaders and politicians across the globe,
particularly those who, like Netanyahu, have managed to stay in power
for many years, have also become corrupt by abusing the privileges and
responsibilities bestowed upon them by their office. Yet what is
unusual about the Israeli case is that some of the corrupt
protagonists actually end up in jail.-rh

Omar Barghouti - Al Jazeera - At concerts throughout Europe, Radiohead fans raised Palestinian flags, yet Radiohead went on with their show in Tel Aviv, allowing Israel to use their brand for whitewashing, or art-washing, its siege of Gaza, forced displacement of Palestinian communities in Jerusalem, the Negev and the Jordan Valley, and incessant construction of illegal settlements and walls in the occupied Palestinian - and Syrian - territory.[bz]

Azad Essa - Mail and Guardian/The Daily Vox - Arthur Lenk, Israel’s
representative to Pretoria, was astutely ambassadorial. Mention
Israel on Twitter and Ambassador would pop around to “celebrate” or
“correct” the perception. He was a one-man PR stunt. In parting from
us you say “South Africa’s liberation story still has resonance and
inspiration for so many of us around the world.” Is this why you
continue to build settlements in the West Bank despite your closest
ally, the United States, asking you not to do so? This is your
inspiration from South Africa? [ak]

Amira Hass - Haaretz - Between the previous Friday, when 20-year-old Omar al-Abed killed three members of the Salomon family in the settlement of Halamish, and the following Thursday, the army raided the village every night except Wednesday.
Last Sunday morning it was still possible to hear a few reservations about Abed’s act. By Wednesday, a veteran Fatah activist said, “The Shin Bet security service and the army think they’re deterring people, but they’re also causing people who don’t support violence to do so.”
[bz]